Maputo's media own goal

Tom Bowker has had a lifelong obsession with Mozambique. His grandparents were missionaries there in the 1980s and, apart from the family connection, the country called to him in other ways.

He and his wife Leigh Elston attended university in London and began working there as journalists. Bowker, who has a master's degree in development economics, wrote about infrastructure finance for trade publications and his wife worked as a reporter in the energy sector.

"We were keen to live somewhere different and I was interested in living in a developing country. Mozambique had always been on my radar; I spoke a bit of Portuguese and Mozambique was an emerging gas story, which is something Leigh has expertise in, so we moved there in 2014. I worked as a stringer for Bloomberg for a year, covering the elections in October 2014, then we saw a gap in the market for something that provided more news for the business community in Mozambique."

In 2015, Bowker and Elston co-founded Zitamar News, which has grown into an established and respected news agency, with a team in Maputo, correspondents around Mozambique and contributing editors in London and New York.

"When we set up the website it coincided with the time of the hidden debt scandal in Mozambique, so we were able to break some aspects of that news along with other international media, so that was good timing for us. But there's never a quiet moment in Mozambique; every year there's been a new major crisis or major news story."

Then came the conflict in Cabo Delgado, which changed the landscape for correspondents reporting on a situation that Mozambican authorities were trying to keep a lid on. Two weeks ago, Bowker, Elston and their children, aged two and four, were expelled from the country.

TIED UP IN RED TAPE

Speaking on Zoom from their temporary home in France, Bowker relates the chain of events that led to their having to leave. If Stephen King and Franz Kafka co-wrote a novel about media and bureaucracy it might sound something like this.

"I started getting questions last year from the media regulator in Mozambique about whether we could provide documentation to show that Zitamar News, our organisation, is registered in the UK," Bowker says.

"These are the people who award my journalist accreditation card and who have renewed it every couple of years since we arrived in 2014. They said we needed a licence to operate from the UK, but that sort of thing doesn't exist in the UK, which I explained.

"But they were not satisfied with that so I got a letter written by the UK high commission confirming that there is no such regulatory authority in the UK.

"I thought we had overcome the question and would be able to renew my residency permit. At the time I thought these were just genuine bureaucratic questions; things have tightened up with migration services and so on - more than a year ago they started asking for more documents than they ever had before, and at the time we managed to satisfy those requests, but this time it increasingly became clear that they were not interested in finding a solution, that this was going to be a way of causing problems for me."

It began to look like a vendetta.

"In December the regulator called me in and basically accused me of working under false pretences for the last five years, saying Zitamar is not a legitimate news organisation, accusing me of employing foreigners, which was not true, and other alleged misdemeanours.

"At that meeting they told me I had 48 hours to hand back my press accreditation. But they didn't give me anything in writing. It was basically 'Hand it back and then we'll talk.' So I did hand it in and then I decided, since they didn't like me applying for press accreditation through Zitamar News, to apply through Associated Press, who I also write for. AP were happy to support my application but when I submitted that it became pretty clear that the authorities were not going to accept that either. I submitted it in December and have still not heard anything back.

"In late January the migration services called me in and said, 'Since you no longer have your press accreditation, which is what was supporting your residency permit, we're going to need your residency permit back now and those of your dependants, your wife and kids, and you all need to leave the country in five days.'

"They were wrong here too because my wife and kids were not legally listed as my dependants, they were Mozambique residents, but that was what they demanded, so we had to hand in our documents.

"Again, they didn't give me anything in writing so my lawyer said I could stay and continue to fight it. We started with diplomatic efforts and legal efforts to work out what was really going on and whether or not we really had to leave. That happened on a Monday - they gave us five days to leave, then on the Friday we were told we could stay until the following Tuesday. We were not happy about this because a proper legal process had not happened so we stayed on, then we were called to another meeting with migration services who this time produced a proper expulsion order from the minister.

"This still included my wife and children, which it shouldn't have done, so then there were more legal efforts to try and get that reviewed. Meanwhile migration booked us a flight and gave us Covid tests, then they cancelled that flight the day before it was supposed to happen. Then a week later they told us they had booked us another flight on February 16 and that went ahead, so that's when we actually left the country."

'CABO DELGADO CHANGED THE ATMOSPHE'

Bowker says he believes that this expulsion from the country he has called home for seven years may have been triggered by his organisation's reporting of the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique's northernmost province.

"I think they would have liked nothing to get out about the fighting there in the first place," he says, "but obviously it has been impossible to keep a total lid on what's going on. I think Zitamar News has been doing a particularly thorough job, in partnership with the publication Media Facts, but we are not the only ones - there are Mozambican publications doing a good job on reporting what's been happening up there. So the battle to keep it quiet has been lost, but the Cabo Delgado conflict has changed the atmosphere for media reporting in Mozambique; it's made it far more restrictive.

"In my experience, the attitude to reporting on Cabo Delgado has been different from anything in the preceding years, when it was a fairly liberal environment compared with some other countries, but now you can definitely feel it's tightening up, formally and informally; there's a new media law coming in which is going to make things even more restrictive."

Bowker is not the only journalist who has been targeted in attempts to quash news about the Cabo Delgado conflict. In 2019, journalists Amade Abubacar and Germano Daniela Adriano spent almost half the year in jail after being detained without charge by the military for reporting on the conflict.

If the intention was to silence further criticism, Mozambique has inadvertently scored an own goal, says Bowker, whose expulsion has been reported far and wide.

"Expelling me at this particular moment shines a spotlight on the fact that they are bringing in more oppressive media laws. There's not much that can be done about it. International organisations can complain, but, as they like to remind us, Mozambique is a sovereign country and will do what it likes. But it's important that local media and news outlets in Mozambique continue to campaign to keep the worst elements of this new media law from happening, because it is now being debated in parliament.

"It could be really restrictive not only on local and private media but on international media operating in Mozambique, which would be a real shame in a country where democracy is already in decline and access to independent, reliable information is difficult for a lot of the population. Many are rural, many do not speak Portuguese and many are illiterate, so things are going in the wrong direction in terms of media freedom and media provision."

REPORTING WITHOUT INTERRUPTION 

Despite what has happened, Bowker and Elston still wish to return to Mozambique.

"Our friends are there, our staff and our colleagues . and it's a lovely country. Maputo is a lovely place to live, but it's complicated if you're in the kind of business we are in."

They will leave France and return to the UK in a couple of months. The practicalities of readjusting to London life will be difficult, although Bowker says he is "going to enjoy being in a place where I feel I can enjoy freedom of expression".

They will continue to run Zitamar News remotely. "It's no longer just me and Leigh; we have team members all over Mozambique, so our being in Europe doesn't make much difference. We will continue to run it and when the clocks change we will be on the same time zone again.

"Despite everything that's happened, we haven't missed a day of publishing."